


Author Commentary: Talking Cure

by Nyxelestia



Series: Abandoned or Hiatus [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Teen Wolf (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Author Commentary, F/M, Gen, M/M, Same Warnings and Tags and Content as Talking Cure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-11-13 21:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11193918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxelestia/pseuds/Nyxelestia
Summary: This is an Author Commentary on my story,Talking Cure, a Captain America/Teen Wolf crossover (telling Stiles' POV, in contrast with Frost Bite, which is Steve's POV). I was developing too many notes and references to just put in the A/N, so I'm doing this instead. Dedicated to anyone who wants to know why I take so long to update.





	1. 1.1 - Self Defense

**Author's Note:**

> Yup, I've finally started an author commentary for this one. :D

The first thing Stiles learned from the SHIELD self-defense instructor was that he was useless. Well, more specifically, he was screwed if someone ever got close enough for him to need the self-defense in the first place.

> **In both stories, I wanted to reference both fandoms in literally the very first line of the fic, to indicate right away that it was a crossover (and just how tightly woven these two universes were supposed to be). In Frost Bite, it was mentioning ‘Steve Rogers’ driving into ‘Beacon Hills’. Here, it was ‘Stiles’ (a distinctive name specific to Teen Wolf) and ‘SHIELD’ (unique to Marvel) in the same sentence.**

"I don' know your stories, and I don' care," said Instructor Polkow. The Southern lilt in his accent did nothing to soften his words.

> **Sgt. Polkow is a minor character from Marvel’s brief comic-book run about the Vietnam War.**

Stiles and four other people - three women and one older guy - stood in a loose semi-circle on the padded floor. Despite Stiles' expectations, they were clad in regular street attire. After all, it wasn't likely they were going to be attacked when they were conveniently in work-out clothes. "Dunno who you're here for, or why. All I know is that you're here today because someone at SHIELD loves you enough that you become a security risk if hurt. The reality is that if someone gets that close to you, you're fucked as it is. What I'm teaching you will only ever give you a chance, not guarantee your safety."

> **You know, the really funny part is that I originally had a plan/idea of who those other civilians in Stiles’ class were, but now I cannot for the life of me remember who I imagined them as. :/**

Stiles nodded, only slowing his head-bobbing when Polkow glared at him.

"Your first move should always be to try and run. Your goal is to incapacitate an attacker so that you can run, or to hold them off until someone else can help you. This is what to do to get away..."

The afternoon was full of pain and embarrassment as Polkow demonstrated on them and they practiced on each other. To Stiles' surprise, only half of it was things like how to actually get out of a hold. The other half was spent learning attackers' moves, both for partners to practice escaping them, and to better understand how to get out of them.

> **Though it does mean Stiles ends up learning a few attacks/moves.**

"Don' get any smart ideas about turning the tables on your assailant," Polkow said. Stiles groaned on the ground from where one of the other students had thrown him. "Your liability is that some'ne in SHIELD is worried about you getting hurt. So your goal is to avoid getting hurt at all costs." He looked pointedly at one of the women who seemed to have been coming here the longest. " _All_ costs!"

The man came and stood right by Stiles.

"The secret to handling an opponent who is larger, stronger, or better trained than you," Polkow continued, making eye contact with all of them. "Is leverage."

> **But luckily, Stiles is an ordinary teenager living an ordinary life, so he’ll never need to evade enemies who are larger, stronger, or better trained than him! :D**

Then he reached down and helped Stiles up, because he wasn't nearly as much of a dick as he acted.

Despite the world of hurt Stiles was in for every weekend, Stiles liked the class. Even still bearing a small bruise from a landing gone wrong from the first class, Stiles all but bounced into the his second one. Afterwards, he screwed up his courage and asked Polkow, "Do you have any other self-defense classes I can join?"

Polkow narrowed his eyes at Stiles. "Why the interest?" he asked.

> **Why not, is the better question.**

"I like learning this stuff," Stiles said. "And, um..." Stiles swallowed, because even within SHIELD, his relationship to Captain America was best kept as quiet as possible. "I'm not only threatened through my SHIELD family member - though he's important. My dad's a cop - sheriff, actually - so I could use all the help I can get."

"And your local police don't have self-defense classes of their own?" Polkow challenged.

"Uh, well - sometimes," Stiles said. "Workshops and stuff. But those aren't - regular, like here." Not to mention those cost money.

Polkow pursed his lips. "We have a lot of people to look after, and not many people to look after them, kid."

Stiles sighed, having expected something like that. With a shrug and setting down his water-bottle, he said, "Worth a shot."

He said as much to Steve later that day, when musing about trying to join some local martial arts thing. There was some dojo around that taught taekwondo, and the local gym had some boxing classes. But they were more about athletic wellness than practical use.

> **Those dojos are all McDojos, I guarantee it. Random aside: the more a dojo tries to sell itself as being ‘authentic’, the less authentic is probably is. Find the dojos that emphasize athleticism and the social role of martial arts. Those aren’t as popular because they don’t “look” particularly Asian or ‘authentic’, but those are a lot closer to what you really need to learn as a martial artist, and what’s taught in various disciplines across Asia.**

So he was a bit surprised when next week, Polkow said to Stiles before the session, "Some week-day evenings, we have contingency classes. They're meant for SHIELD agents who aren't in the field, pretty much the same stuff as here. But at least you get more practice, might learn a thing or two I don' bother with for the civilians."

Stiles grinned, scribbling down the times and days of the other sessions. "Thanks, dude!"

"Don't 'dude' me," Polkow grumbled as he wandered off. "I work for a living."

> **This is based off an old army joke that officers (lieutenants and above in the military hierarchy) don’t ever get shit done, but sergeants – the highest-ranking NCOs (non-commissioned officers), _do_ get shit done. These guys have as much respect as officers – but “sir” and “ma’am” are titles reserved for officers, not sergeants (who are always addressed as “sergeant”, and anything else is actually a bit disrespectful). So if you call a sergeant “sir” or “ma’am”, they’ll be quite indignant about it and inform you that they _work_ for a living. Which is true, officers are useless, which I know because I nearly became one, myself. :P**

Snickering, Stiles already started figuring out which sessions he could go to. Only a few clashed with the lacrosse schedule, so he could even keep going once he was back at school.

Stiles didn't miss the almost awed looks Polkow shot him for the rest of that session. He almost asked, but decided not to risk the offer of extra lessons.

He did, however, tell Scott about it the next day, when Stiles was showing him all the stuff he learned at SHIELD the day before.

They sprawled across the dead grass of Stiles' backyard from where they'd landed when practicing rolls. Scott earnestly suggested, "Maybe he's in awe of what a good student you are?"

> **Before you learn anything else, you should always learn how to fall and how to roll correctly. These seem so simple or so unnecessary, but they minimize the damage and maximize the speed at which you can get back up. The action heroes who can pick themselves up off the floor right away, or can roll with an enemies attacks and come out standing? They know how to fall correctly.**

Stiles snorted, and Scott shrugged. "Just a thought."

With that, they wiled away the rest of the morning working on their moves together. It was a good thing Scott's mom was a nurse. She no longer blinked at weird bruises or bloodstains, these days, just patched them up and waved them off with a stern reminder to be more careful.

Scott got the moves a lot better and faster than Stiles, and ended up having to help _him_ soon enough.

Stiles wasn't surprised. Scott'd always had fantastic control over his body and how he moved, even before he started trying to copy the moves of a superhero from YouTube videos. He'd mastered lacrosse maneuvers long ago. If he could just run and work out long enough to build up some muscle, he would be an even better player than Jackson.

> **I’ll keep repeating this until the day I die: “super-strength and speed” does not magically turn you into a superb athlete. Sports aren’t _just_ work-outs, they are contingent on actual complex maneuvers, skills, and training. You can’t just grab a body-building and dump him onto a football field and expect him to be great at it. You can get the fastest track star in the world, but that doesn’t mean she’s also the best soccer player in the world. The only way Scott could’ve suddenly become a lacrosse superstar just from lycanthropy is if he already had mastered the maneuvers of lacrosse – he just couldn’t maintain them because of the asthma.**

Unfortunately, despite Steve's awe of inhalers, they only treated the symptoms of asthma, not the cause. Scott was stuck with his lungs as they were.

(When Stiles had been younger, he'd tried to figure out if it was possible for him and Scott to trade lungs. Because if Scott could just run further than a few paces without losing his breath, he could be so good. And it wasn't like Stiles cared as much about sports as Scott did. He'd been despondent to realize it wasn't possible yet. Knowing how worried everyone had been about him in the aftermath of his mother's death, Stiles - for the first time in his little life - had deleted and destroyed his research. To this day, no one knew what Stiles had hoped to do. Not Scott, not Dad, not even Steve.)

> **A hint as to just how early Stiles’ slightly self-destructive streak really went back.**

Eventually, Scott reached his limit, struggling to breathe even just standing. It took over ten minutes of resting after using his inhaler for him to be breathing well enough to bike home.

> **Which was also to further emphasize the drastic disparity between Scott before the Bite and Scott after it.**

As soon as Scott disappeared around the street corner, Stiles changed into clothes that were so ugly they’d never see the light of day again, and went up to the dust-filled attic.

Stiles had found Bucky’s flag by accident. But, that drove him to start looking through all his mom's old crap on purpose. Since the Barnes were apparently a family of packrats, there was a lot of old crap to look through.

> **Stiles was pawing through the attic for cool old stuff to show to Steve, and found the flag that way. He was expecting a little knick-knack like a bottle-cap or some old books or something, not something as dramatic and important as that flag.**

Thought it wasn't really his mom's old stuff so much as an entire family's stuff. Every death in the family led to their stuff getting redistributed among surviving family members, until everything ended up with Mom - and now, Stiles.

> **My mother is such a packrat, so I describe all this almost-hoarding with love. :)**

The process ended up doubling as a general clean-up job. He also made a few nice side-profits, once he started finding things that made for good eBay auctions. He put some old appliances on Craigslist. Within a week, he sold an old sewing machine to a historical cosplayer from San Francisco. He even got some extra money by offering to drop it off at her place during his next trip to the SHIELD office there instead of making her pick it up.

It was actually pretty fun. More of the stuff than not involved having to do research - first to figure out what the thing he was holding even was, then to find out if it was worth anything. Pretty much anything Stiles' age or younger wasn't worth anything...yet, anyway. If he could hold out hope for his Pokémon cards, he could hold out on some books being worth something in a few decades.

> **I wrote in _this_ Pokemon reference way before Pokemon Go, too. :P**

Stiles had gone in planning to hold onto anything old enough for Steve to have known it, but he actually didn't find anything, at first. Most of the crap seemed to be a bunch of sewing stuff - books and supplies - from the sixties and seventies. They probably came from one of his great aunts. There were cookbooks, too, which Stiles actually decided to hold onto for himself. There were some clothes that made Stiles wonder about the second child his parents had once hoped for, and if they'd been hoping for a daughter.

> **I didn’t really notice it at the time, but I think part of the reason why I like Teen Wolf so much is the number of only children in the show, and how the focus is on teenagers and their parents.**

He kind of liked the idea of having a little sister, a thought which led to a lot of sniffling that had nothing to do with the dust accrued in the attic. He ended his day early and went downstairs to look up more memes and cat videos to send to Steve.

Steve was the furthest thing from a little sister imaginable, but he was family and he needed guidance through the modern world. That was close enough for Stiles.

> **From the series summary: Pack is more than blood or bite, a team is not just the people you save the world with, and family is beyond the dictates of DNA. They are the people who you'd go down in flames for, who will always be by your side, and[who you've still got at the end of the line](http://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/post/148672925650/omg-omg-okay-so-i-was-reading-your-series-summary).**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my birthday, so since I won't get to finish any actual fic in time, you get author commentary. :P


	2. 1.2 - West Coast 9/11

_TURN ON THE NEWS!_ Scott's text read. On screen, Stiles paused his show right in the middle of Captain Kirk's scenery chewing as another message came in. _CHANNEL 7! RIGHT NOW!!!_

> **While there is a secondary plot purpose to it, I also have them text a lot just to emphasize the fact that they are, y’know, teenagers. In the show, they predominantly call each other or read texts out because of the medium, but it’s also a little old-fashioned compared to how actual teenagers communicate.**

Stiles did as he was told, and almost immediately wished he hadn't.

The glass of juice Stiles had just poured himself froze halfway to his mouth as he realized he was staring at Stark Mansion. No, the _ruins_ of Stark Mansion. Even as he was looking at it live, some piece of a wall went crumbling down. Stiles heart jumped up to his throat as he realized that was a chair falling into the ocean. He could see the moving dots of little people already crawling through, looking for other people.

> **The other huge purpose of this scene and chapter, besides tying together the two crossover fandoms into one universe, is to show the impact these universes have on each other. It’s not so visible in the movies (though very well done in Agents of SHIELD, and as of this week, Spider-Man: Homecoming), but the events of the movies and superhero shenanigans have tremendous ripple effects…but at the same time, most people don’t really experience those events. Most people only see them on TV, which is also important to how the ‘regular’ world feels about and reacts to the superhero stuff.**

They were looking for Iron Man. Looking, but not finding.

He called Scott.

"What the fuck?" Stiles breathed out.

"I know!" Scott cried out. "You know that bombing in L.A. yesterday? They're saying it's the same guy."

"The Mandarin?" Stiles asked, clutching the phone as he set down his lemonade. His stomach was churning too much for such a citric drink.

> **This was also to ground the world of superheroes more firmly in the context of the real world, and further the realistic spin that the MCU has put on superheroes and supervillains. In the real world, we don’t call them supervillains, we call them criminals and terrorists ~~or the President~~.**

"Yeah," Scott said. "The governor's already called in the National Guard. Like the entire L.A. County is going on lock down because of this."

> **As someone who currently lives in the ZIP code next-door to the part of Malibu that Stark Mansion was supposed to be in, I shudder to think of how we would’ve reacted to a terrorist attack right on our literal shores.**

They stayed on the phone. They watched the circling footage of Stark Mansion falling apart, reiterations of the Mandarin's previous activity, and the increasingly desperate attempts to locate Iron Man.

Or rather, to locate Tony Stark's body.

Stiles barely kept his hands from shaking when he finally hung up, Scott still having to go in to work at the veterinary clinic. He sat glued to the couch, lemonade and Star Trek marathon forgotten. He waited - along with millions of other people around the country and around the world - for someone to find Iron Man.

> **Believe it not, lines like this were the reason why I put terrorism and 9/11 as trigger warnings in the A/N, rather than the actual references to them, below. Talking about terrorist attacks is one thing. Reliving what it was like to watch them live and the widespread fear and panic and anger afterwards is another thing entirely. From 9/11 to the 7/7 bombings to school shootings to countless other acts of terrorism big and small, domestic and international…there is a reason why these are referred to as _terror_ ism: they are fucking terrifying, whether you are actually there for it or not.**

He was still there when he heard Dad's SUV pull into the drive-way. The black car was a comforting blob in his peripheral vision as he kept his eyes locked on to the screen.

“Dad!” Stiles cried out when the front door opened. “You gotta see this!”

Dad came into the living room and halted in the doorway when he caught sight of the TV. A police chief standing on the PCH updated a CNN reporter about the search for Iron Man, for a Hero of New York.

> **PCH = Pacific Coast Highway. It’s the westernmost highway in America, also known as State Route 1 (SR-1) or California State Route 1 (CA-1) for this reason. It’s a very nice road, as long as you’re not on it from 7a-10a or 4p-7p (rush hours) – _then_ it’s a clusterfuck of traffic hell. I used to take the weirdest shifts at work specifically to avoid having to take the PCH during rush hours.**

“How long…?” Dad asked, stunned. On-screen, the camera zoomed in towards the water. A couch fell off of some piled-up pieces of wall and slowly sunk into the ocean.

“The news broke less than an hour ago,” Stiles answered. "S-Scott texted me to turn on the TV, and..."

Dad took a deep breath, then pulled out his phone, glancing away from the TV as he thumbed at the touchscreen.

“…yeah, Clark? No, yeah, I’m looking at it, now. We should get everyone ready. Doubt it, but I'm thinking of traffic. As soon as that lock-down lifts, half of Los Angeles is going to get the hell out of dodge and most of them are coming north, our way. Yeah. And people are going to panic. This is the first terrorist attack on US soil since the Twin Towers. Well, most people don’t see aliens as terrorists. Still, this is also the first one in California. This thing is about to be a West Coast 9/11, and even up here, people will react.”

> **Of course, along with the vague descriptions of post-terrorist reactions, a direct comparison to 9/11 was unavoidable. For those of you who remember 9/11 itself, imagine it happening again barely half a year after a foreign invasion in New York City. I wanted to show the ‘real’ world impact of alien invasions and supervillain/terrorist attacks, and their parallels – as the conversation implies, there is a lot of parallel in how to handle an alien invasion and how to handle a terrorist attack, but at the same time, most people don’t see aliens as terrorists.**

After a few more minutes, Dad hung up, turning his attention back to the TV with an already-exhausted sigh.

“…was 9/11 really like this?” Stiles asked. He had faint memories of starting off pre-school with his parents, teachers, and every grown-up he knew being scared. He remembered nothing beyond that.

Dad looked oddly startled, then said, “Sort of. We’ll have to see how this unfolds, but it looks like that’s where this is headed.”

> **This was also to highlight how _young_ Stiles really is, in context. 9/11 was a huge turning point in American history and global politics, and for people who remember what things were like before then, the change in everything from foreign policy to airport security is astronomical…but for more and more kids, it’s just the norm. They grew up with the world being like this. For context, the 2016 Presidential election was the first to have voters who don’t _remember_ 9/11 – and the upcoming 2018 midterm election and the next 2020 presidential election will be the first with voters _born_ after 9/11. Feeling old, yet?**

Stiles bit his lip, turning his attention back to the TV screen.

“I’m going to call Steve,” Stiles announced. It took him a few minutes to actually pull out his phone and do so.

Unsurprisingly, it went to voicemail - SHIELD must be going crazy, right now. He didn’t bother leaving a voice message.

Ten minutes later, he got a text from Steve asking, _Are you okay?_

_Yeah,_ Stiles sent back. Then, _Dad says this is like a West Coast 9/11._

After a minute of watching helicopters fly around the ruins of Stark’s cliff-side mansion, Stiles got a response.

_That’s what everyone over here is saying, too._

> **Steve isn’t young – but he wasn’t there for 9/11, either, which also impacts how he views security, politics, and warfare. He and Stiles are both in the same boat of knowing about 9/11 and huge, world-changing terrorist attacks, without really remembering just how much they change the world due to not having a personal context or memory to go with it. They’re in that same boat, just for different reasons.**

_Are YOU okay?_ Stiles asked. _Stark was your friend._

Out of all the things Steve could have responded with, Stiles hadn’t expected him to say, _Oh, I doubt he’s dead._

_???_ was all Stiles could send in bewilderment.

_I’m more worried about Ms. Potts than Tony,_ Steve explained. _Iron Man is a lot harder to kill than most people realize._

> **I like to imagine that the Avengers _were_ helping Tony/Iron Man deal with the Mandarin and such – they were just helping him off-screen, i.e. Steve helping with the clean-up, Nat sending Tony the information we see him analyzing in the movie, etc.**

They didn’t exchange any more messages after that. Stiles forewent his attic rummaging for the day to stay propped up in front of the TV and keep an eye on the Internet.

It was a nightmare.

Every single trending tag on Twitter was about the attack. Facebook was filled with people checking on everyone they knew in Los Angeles, regardless of how close or far from Malibu they were. Police stations across the state were issuing statements. Almost every single national guard unit was waiting for orders. The governor of California was issuing a statement alongside the mayor of Malibu and the L.A. County Sheriff. The entire PCH along Los Angeles was shut down, causing ripple effects and traffic problems throughout the entire county.

> **Would the trending hashtag have been #PrayforMalibu or #PrayforLosAngeles? And would people have tagged #RIPTonyStark or #RIPIronMan?**

It was a testament to how chaotic everything was that the next day, after a mid-week session learning how to twist a gun out of someone’s grip, Polkow came up to Stiles and asked him, “Do you know what’s going on?”

Stiles blinked in surprise. “Why would I know?”

“Because Captain America is friends with Tony Stark,” Polkow said.

Stiles pursed his lips, starting to see why the guy let Stiles start crashing more lessons.

> **And starting to understand the effect Steve can have on people, and the kind of things Captain America can get away with. ;)**

“…I don’t really know,” Stiles said. “But I’ve been told Iron Man is a lot harder to kill than he looks.”

Polkow nodded. “Let’s hope so.”

In the end, he was.

Stiles' first inkling of that was waking up to a mass e-mail from Polkow saying the day's lessons were cancelled because all SHIELD resources were being devoted to-

He blinked as he re-read the e-mail a dozen times. He went online himself, and freaked the fuck out because the _President of the United States of America had been kidnapped HOLY SHIT-_

> **Imagine President Obama getting kidnapped half a year after an alien invasion in New York City…because I actually really hated that they white-washed the POTUS for the series so I’m probably just going to make this RPF-y and have it actually be President Obama.**

That was when he heard the sounds of the TV on downstairs. He barrelled down the stairs to see Dad still in his fluffy house-robe on the couch. He was staring in open shock at the TV screen as newscameras circled around the remains of Air Force One as they had the remains of Stark Mansion.

" _Ho-_ ly god," Stiles murmured. Dad jerked, seeing Stiles, and rather than saying anything, he patted the spot on the couch next to him.

"Is this - is this war?" Stiles asked shakily. "Because first Iron Man, now the President-"

> **Actually, better analogy: imagine that President Bush got kidnapped a day or two after 9/11, and suddenly the political turmoil of the MCU’s later movies will make a lot more sense.**

"It looks like that's what the Mandarin is aiming for," Dad said darkly, clutching an empty coffee mug in a white-knuckled grip. "It's - Jesus, even when I was serving, I never saw anything like this."

He wasn't talking about serving as a cop.

"Not even in Korea?" Stiles asked.

Dad shook his head. "But then, it's not like we expect problems in Yongsan," he said.

> **The US military actually has a pretty big presence in South Korea. The Yongsan Garrison in Seoul is the US military HQ of South Korea. I headcanon that the Sheriff was an MP (military police) when he was in the Army, which actually makes up a huge portion of his pre-Sheriff police background.**

Stiles watched as the news switched from the Air Force One remains to statements from various political leaders - most of whom Stiles didn't recognize.

Most of whom promised America was ready for war.

"Is that..." Stiles swallowed. "Is that likely?"

"I don't know," Dad said, one arm letting go of the coffee mug to wrap around Stiles' shoulders. Since Stiles hadn't put on a robe or a sweater before coming downstairs, he cuddled into his father's currently-fluffy side. "People were saying this same crap after 9/11, too. And no one can seem to agree on whether or not we even _went_ to war back then, either, let alone whether we should have."

> **For you young’uns and non-Americans, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, a lot of people were actually convinced that we were about to enter WWIII (yes, _World War Three_ ). Terrorism was a relatively new concept at the time, and that was the first time warfare had reached mainland America in over a century (the American-controlled territories such as Hawaii and Alaska attacked in WWII were not considered part of the US at the time and are often not seen as ‘really’ American even now, but the continental US is, especially the Northeast – those states are often seen as the quintessential American states).**

"...I'm going to call Steve," Stiles said.

"Don't," Dad said immediately. "I already left him a message, but he's there." He jerked his chin towards the TV, which was showing the river area around the smoldering plane. "They showed him, earlier. And he must be busy. He'll call us when he can, but this takes priority."

Stiles nodded, slumping into his dad's one-armed embrace as he started texting Scott. Apart from toasting some frozen waffles for a half-hearted breakfast and making a whole new pot of coffee, Stiles barely moved. Not because he was shocked - Stiles felt like he was all out. No, it was because some news anchor started talking about what it would take to go to war. When she brought up the draft, Dad wrapped Stiles in another hug and didn't let go of him for the rest of the morning.

Dad wanted to stay home, but the town was still reeling from the attack on Iron Man just a few days prior. People needed some reassuring figures out on the streets right now.

> **Even when the world feels like it’s ending, life goes on, and we just have to carry on with it.**

"I'll bring you dinner as soon as I drop Scott off at home," Stiles promised, and it was only then that Dad was able to walk out the door.

It kind of figured that just as Stiles was backing out of the driveway to go pick up Scott from work that Steve finally called.

And he called with news about the survivors of the Air Force One crash.

Not that there _were_ survivors - that had been on the news for the last hour before Stiles left. No, what Stiles was hearing before the rest of the world was just _how_ there were survivors in the first place.

"They were rescued by Stark?" Stiles asked.

> **Stiles isn’t quite familiar with the rest of the Avengers yet, at this point, which is why he still says ‘Stark’ instead of ‘Tony’.**

"Maybe," Steve said. In the background, Stiles could hear the sound of helicopters, vehicles, and hundreds of voices. It was trippy to realize he could turn on any major news channel right now and see where Steve was, have a direct phone line into that high-profile chaos. "They were rescued by Iron Man, but the suit fell apart as soon as it was hit by a truck. I've seen the kind of hits Tony's taken, it should take more than a truck to affect the suit. There was no one inside the parts, though those parts apparently flew away on their own."

> **Imagine how those guys must’ve felt, being rescued by Iron Man, only to see the suit basically break apart into pieces and have no one actually inside them.**

"...the fuck?" Stiles asked, making his way towards the veterinary clinic.

"Yeah," Steve said. "My money is on Tony being alive - but we still don't have proof."

Stiles took a deep breath. "My dad's scared."

"Everyone's scared," Steve tried to reassure him.

> **Again, hence the ‘terror’ in ‘terrorism’.**

"No, I mean-" Stiles swallowed. "You know how pretty much everyone is demanding Congress declare war?"

"Yes," Steve said darkly.

"Some talking heads started bringing up the draft," Stiles said. "And now Dad's scared."

> **Yes, after 9/11, people were freaking out about another draft, too.**

"Your dad's too old for the draft age," Steve said, and Stiles could hear the frown in his adoptive uncle's voice.

"But in less than two years, I'm going to be old enough for it," Stiles said. "That's what he's scared of. And like half the police force here are also reservists, half this damn town. If Congress actually declares war-"

> **For a small, inland town like Beacon Hills, they probably do have a lot of reservists (or at least, they’ll be a little more visible than in a larger town or a city). Especially if they actually have a junior ROTC program in their school. (Not that we can really tell, since we never see any cadets in uniform in the hallways. Which is a damn shame, too, because that would’ve been some great fanservice for Boyd. :P)**

"I doubt it," Steve cut in. "It would take a lot more than this to get them to do that."

Stiles pursed his lips, making a turn and driving a block in silence.

"Congress never declared war since your day," Stiles said. "Yet somehow, over half a million soldiers have died in one war or another since then. And we had drafts for Vietnam and Korea."

> **Both are correct – technically speaking, American never strictly went to _war_ , in the legal sense, since WWII. Korea and Vietnam were both various military interventions, but they were not situations where the country itself is ‘at’ war with other countries like we were in WWII. Yet, we still had a draft. Most legislation about restricting the draft are not to get rid of it entirely, but to mandate that a formal, Congressional declaration of war be a mandatory prerequisite to instituting a draft. If this had been in place, either America would’ve had to formally re-enter war for Vietnam and Korea (which would’ve effectively devolved into WWIII), or there wouldn’t have been such _extensive_ American military involvement because there would’ve been no draft.**

"I know," Steve said. There was the sound of footsteps, and noises fading in and out. Apparently, Steve was moving to somewhere quieter. "If I'm going to be honest, Stiles? I'm scared, too."

Stiles gripped the steering wheel as the clinic came into view. He pulled into the parking lot, but didn't get out of the jeep to go in, or text Scott. The vet and his aide had probably already seen him, anyway, and Stiles could use an extra minute or two if they hadn't.

"I'm not going to lie," Steve said. "It's scary. Terrifying, even. But...well. I'm not allowed to say much, but I will say this: there's something - wrong, with this. The attack on Tony's friend, his mansion, kidnapping the president... From the strategic standpoint, that pattern doesn't make sense. The whole damn thing doesn't make much sense, and there is way more to this story than any of us know. I don't think it's going to be as simple as declaring war or hunting down a terrorist."

> **This probably went over most people’s heads, but this is also one of those subtle ways that not ‘remembering’ 9/11, yet being a part of that generation, affects Steve. Everyone else in his generation is being slammed with several overlapping memories and situations in the wake of these attacks, but Steve wasn’t there for those, so he’s still looking at all of this from the perspective of a WWII-era soldier. From the perspective of someone who experienced and live through terrorism, the pattern of attacks perpetrated by the Mandarin are, if not the most logical, perfectly understandable. From the perspective of a total-war strategist, though, they make no real sense. That is, in a sense, why Steve is often so perceptive and so quick to cut through a lot of surrounding bullshit when it comes to the in-universe politics and events – he’s not loaded down with recent history when he’s looking at them, which enables him to better see _through_ them.**

"You really think so?" Stiles asked. The clinic door opened and Scott meandered out, looking about as cheerless as Stiles felt.

"Yeah," Steve said. There was a burst of beeping from somewhere on Steve's end. "I've gotta go. I'll call when I get some free time, okay?"

"Okay," Stiles said, wondering if Steve was going to be able to visit them for Christmas. He rather doubted it, but said nothing about it.

Stiles hung up just as Scott opened the door to the jeep.

"Steve," Stiles said, waving the phone before plugging it into the car-charger and dropping it into the cup-holder.

> **In retrospect, I actually doubt that a jeep as old as Stiles’ would have any capacity for a car-charger. Then again, he did wire a police scanner into his jeep, so more contemporary technological car mods are probably a piece of cake for him, anyway…**

Scott nodded. "Everything okay?"

Stiles snorted, and that was all the answer Scott needed. When they got to Scott's home, Melissa came out and gave Stiles a hug and a thermos.

"Hot chocolate for you and your dad," she said, pressing it into his hands. Stiles didn't have the heart to ask if it was the low-fat one, instead thanking her as he backed Roscoe out of their driveway and headed to the station.

There, Stiles was unsurprised to see way more than the typical night-roster present. Both TVs in the station were on, one tuned to Channel 7 and the other to CNN. Dad was out on a call about a robbery - petty crime stopped for no one and nothing - so Stiles sprawled across the detainee bench with the tupperware of turkey-meatball pasta and Melissa's hot chocolate. Despite the extra hands on deck, there was barely half the usual chatter in the department, save for Tara and Haigh manning the phones and the deputies murmuring among themselves.

> **I wanted to name drop some characters ahead of time, but I also wanted to establish the mood and atmosphere of the ‘civilian’ world in the wake of superhero events.**

Stiles greeted his Dad with another bone-crushing hug when he came back, and they absconded to the Sheriff's office to eat together, with Dad sharing the bad news.

"We've had to set up an extra patrol around the town's mosque," Dad said, sighing into his hot chocolate. "And another around the Buddhist temple in Hill Valley, on the Eastern point of the county, and around a Chinese grocery store near that. They've already had vandalisms." He swallowed a bit of meatball.

God, and everyone was still saying this wasn't as bad as 9/11. Though if the President wasn't found soon...

> **The Ten Rings were generally portrayed as a Middle-East centric but largely international terrorist group in the Iron Man movies. Meanwhile, the Mandarin is a very (East) Asian/oriental concept. I have no doubt that all “Easterners” (East Asians and Middle Easterners) would’ve faced a huge amount of backlash in the aftermath of the Ten Rings led by the Mandarin attacking a beloved superhero who saved the world from aliens. (Also, wanted to name-drop the Eastern Point that Satomi’s pack found refuge in during the deadpool events of Season 4.)**

"It's going to get worse, isn't it?" Stiles asked.

Dad nodded. "Probably."

Except it didn't.

No, Stiles went to bed dreading the rest of his holidays, the new year, all the talk of war and vengeance on the horizon.

He woke up to find out the President was alive and well. And that he'd been rescued by Iron Man, Pepper Potts, and War Machine (because seriously, fuck the Iron Patriot makeover).

> **Look up the Iron Man 3 deleted scenes, they’re extended versions of the mass media perceptions of the War Machine/Iron Patriot change that we saw hints of in the movie itself.**

Oh, and the biggest terrorist to target America since 9/11 was a hoax, the Vice-President of the United States was corrupt, and a major military contractor had made exploding supersoldiers without anyone noticing.

> **I did want to emphasize the impact of Iron Man 3 – but I also didn’t want to spend too much _time_ on it, since I wasn’t really changing anything from the canonical events. As such, I strove to condense all the major events of that movie into one, pithy sentence. The point of this scene and chapter was the _impact_ of what happened in Iron Man 3, not the events themselves.**

Just before it broke all over the news, Steve called to give Stiles and Dad the news, himself.

And to tell them that he wouldn't be able to make it for Christmas, or any of the Winter Break holidays at all.

> **Partially, this was to emphasize the reality of the situation, given that the events of Iron Man 3 were happening right around Christmas. But also, between the Thanksgiving bit that just happened beforehand in Frost Bite, and some upcoming ‘family’ events in both stories, I felt like spending time on the Winter holidays between the two would’ve been too repetitive, yet at the same time, something that relationship-developing would’ve deserved more than being glossed over with a few lines.**

Stiles wasn't particularly surprised, but he was a little disappointed.

"You're needed over there," Dad said. "Don't ever apologize for that. There are lives at stake in what you do, Steve, we can handle waiting a few more months before seeing you again." Dad shook his head, looking as incredulous as Stiles felt. "Jesus Christ, the President getting kidnapped, that alone..."

> **Remember what I said about imagining President Bush getting kidnapped a few days after 9/11? Now imagine that when he’s recovered, it turns out Vice President Cheney was conspiring with the terrorists directly to kill Bush and take his seat in the White House.**

No matter how disappointed Stiles was, he didn't resent Steve for it. He said as much when telling Scott about it that evening.

"At least he _has_ a reason," Scott muttered, helping Stiles pack up Steve's Christmas gift to mail it. He was holding up the bag of packing peanuts as Stiles put the phonograph in a box. "Dad doesn't even bother, anymore, he just sends Christmas cards."

"Does he still send gift-cards with them?"

"Yeah," Scott said, rolling his eyes. "I don't even get his logic. 'You're my only kid and I'm going to miss the biggest family holiday of the year, so have a few free smoothies to make up for it'!"

> **Distant Parent Logic is distant and not particularly parental. At least Agent McCall has the good sense to recognize that he’s a crappy parent and keep his distance from his son, which does actually put him several steps ahead of a lot of other parents. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean this _won’t_ have a drastic and lasting impact on his son.**

Stiles snorted, patting around the mess of his room to look for the audio cable for the phonograph. "Hey, at least you get free smoothies, and he leaves you alone."

"Yeah," Scott said. He poured some of the styrofoam bits into a plastic bag, so Stiles could pad the horn without individual peanuts getting stuck inside. "Kinda wish he would just leave us completely alone instead of trying to...I don't even know what he's trying to do."

They finished packing up Steve's gift, then decorated it with the most obnoxious glitter glue Stiles could find. Letting it dry overnight, Stiles mailed it off the next morning. It cost almost as much as the original gift to ship it to D.C., but it would get there around the same time as Steve got home.

> **I can’t decide whether Stiles would’ve used red and green glitter glue, or red-white-and-blue glitter glue. :P**

While very belated because mailing rates and international terrorist conspiracies, they still got to celebrate the holidays together in their own weird way. The big box of gifts didn't get to Casa Stilinski until the day after the last night of Hannukah, but Stiles dutifully opened them one day at a time, anyway. He grinned in delight at all the merch, especially once he realized most of it was stuff that wasn't even released yet. He got a Captain America thermos, an Iron Man water bottle, a Thor-themed notebook, a Hawkeye pencase designed to look like a quiver, and wrist-cuffs designed to look like whatever the hell those things on the Black Widow's wrists were during the Battle of New York. He snorted when Steve told him about how hard it was to find merchandise with all six of the Avengers and didn't cut out Nat, or Nat and Clint.

> **This was both to highlight the holidays of an interfaith family, as well as take a jab at the sexism and generally fuckery of Avengers merchandise that excludes Nat so much (and often excludes Clint as well). In-universe, it would make a bit more sense since they’re spies and all…but out of universe, out here in the real world, it’s total bullshit.**

For whatever reason, it felt weird that Steve was on a first-name basis with the rest of the Heroes of New York. Why that was weirder than the fact Steve _was_ one of them, was an Avenger, was _Captain America_ \- Stiles would never know.

> **This is because he thinks of Steve _as_ Steve, not as Captain America, which is to say a person who is occasionally a superhero. But he still thinks of the rest of the team as the Black Widow, Iron Man, Hulk, Hawkeye, and Thor…aka, as superheroes who are occasionally regular people.**

The last gift, Stiles held off on until the day Steve finally made it home to D.C., two days before the New Year. He ripped off the wrapping paper, then frowned when there was another layer of wrapping paper underneath that.

That and a post-it with _This is not about Captain America!_ on it. There was another layer under that, with a note saying _It's just patriotic!_ There were a dozen layers, each with increasingly desperate-sounding pleas insisting that whatever was inside was not about Captain America.

Eventually, Stiles got to a knock-off Captain America shirt, with a wry holiday card saying, _That was the speech I got from the street vendor as soon as he realized I was actually Captain America._

Stiles was still laughing when he called Steve. "I'm wearing this on my first day of school," he promised, and Steve chuckled.

> **And he did. Take a look at the very first episode of Teen Wolf, when Scott and Stiles go into the Preserve after the first day of school back from Winter Break to look for Scott’s inhaler. The logo on Stiles’ shirt is basically a knock-off Captain America icon. ;)**

Despite the distance between them, despite the lateness of the gifts, and despite all the fear that had permeated the holidays, Stiles felt pretty confident in saying this was one of the best Winter Breaks he'd ever had.


	3. 1.3 - Treasure Trove

As was the way of the world, it was right around the time Stiles gave up expecting to anything from Steve's era that he finally found something. The day after the President's rescue and the Mandarin Conspiracy was unveiled, no less.

> **That’s not a sentence you read every day in Teen Wolf fanfic. :P**

First, in the last box of clothes, Stiles found what looked like a tiny "men's" section. Well, it wasn't labelled that way, but the majority of the old clothes thus far were women's clothes. Stiles found some shirts, some ties, and a bunch of hats, with a bunch of mothballs at the bottom of the box. Most of them were from the sixties, but Stiles looked up the tags of two men's hats wrapped in old newspaper. His eyebrows shot up when he saw how old they were.

> **Well, when he saw the dates on the newspapers at any rate. I forgot the mention that. Whoops.**

Based on the age, Stiles doubted they were anyone's but Bucky's.

He laid out a more recent newspaper - thank Dad for his old habits - and laid the hats on top, analyzing them. He'd already done something like this for most of the other clothes, since he didn't wear them. They made for good eBay sales. But these two...

> **This, combined with the ‘birthday money’ from Steve, is probably why Stiles was able to buy so many gifts for Lydia in Season 2. Vintage clothing sales/auctions can go for a lot if you market and distribute them right. :P**

Stiles would check with Steve, first.

He wondered if there was any particular uses for these hats. One colored lightly, one dark - did Bucky wear specific hats to specific events? Or was it just whatever color matched his outfit?

Steve would know - if these were Bucky's hats at all. For all Stiles knew, these were neither Steve's nor Bucky's. His grandma and grand-aunts had their own lives and knew other men, too.

> **This line was mostly to emphasize that the Barnes’ ladies lives didn’t revolve around dead men from decades ago. They kept a few keepsakes – but at the same time, _only_ a few keepsakes. There a ton of other things from more recent decades (like all those other vintage clothes), but only a few, very small, items from around seventy years ago.**

He wrapped the hats in newspaper and put them in an old shoebox, which went to the top shelf of his closet. Safest place he could think of, at least for now.

If Stiles were being honest with himself, he kind of expected that to be the last of it. He forgot about them completely when the giant box of gifts from Steve came in later that day.

> **The giant box of Christmas/Hanukkah gifts, to be exact.**

That was probably why he was so blindsided when he found _Captain America #1_ in one of the boxes of old books. He traced the bowdlerized Bucky on the cover, and snorted at the cheesy cover with Steve punching Hitler in the face.

> Stiles remembered Steve talking about the shows and how the act included punching Hitler in the face. Mostly from Steve talking about the actor who played Hitler. As the only two men in a show otherwise made up of USO chorus girls, they'd been tight.

> **Given the need for men on the front lines, the show would’ve been designed to rely on as few male actors as possible.**

Most of the time, Steve was just Steve Rogers, Stiles' adoptive grand-uncle, the extended family Stiles never even knew he wanted. It always felt like a punch to the gut every time the universe reminded him that his uncle was also Captain America, the First Avenger and a Hero of New York.

> **No lie, I kinda wrote that paragraph in specifically to be able to write it into the summary as well. But it does also foreshadow/summarize a lot of Stiles’ relationship with Steve. To him, Steve is just Steve, and much like he’d already told Steve over Thanksgiving, sometimes Stiles would even _forget_ that Steve is Captain America. He thinks of Captain America as Steve’s “day job”, whereas the rest of the world treats it as Steve’s identity.**

He cackled as he read it, and showed it to Scott the next time he came over, both of them laughing at the sheer ridiculousness. Afterwards, he put the comic away in an old folder, with vague plans to get comic protectors later.

After the hats and the comic books, Stiles figured that maybe there would be some other stuff. Maybe little things, like a comb or some ties or something.

...well, a bunch of newspaper-wrapped medals and old letters were technically 'little'.

> **Physically little, at least. Psychosocially, though, these were _huge_.**

When Stiles saw what looked like a box for a clock, he already doubted it would have an actual clock. Still, he figured he could check and see if there was anything interesting. He hadn't expected it to be something full of more history than almost all the rest of the crap in the attic combined.

Stiles almost dropped the box when he realized what he was holding.

"Why are you up here?" Stiles demanded of the scraps of metal and ribbon.

> **This was slightly OOC (Stiles was never prone to talking to himself to work through things), but I wanted at least a little bit of dialogue, as well as indicate just _how_ shocked Stiles was by what he found.**

Medals. War medals.

It was one thing to know Stiles' grand-uncle was a well-decorated soldier. Somehow, it was another thing entirely to actually be holding the decorations in his hands.

Underneath the medals sat certificates for all the medals, and citations describing exactly how Bucky earned each and every one of them. Stiles unfolded each one with care, squinting at the faded ink and reading out the decades-old words into the empty attic.

> **These were probably held onto specifically because they were the only accounts the Barnes ladies would’ve had. With both Steve and Bucky gone, there was no one to really tell them about what their boys went through in the war. So they held onto the medals, and the paperwork accounting the reasons for those medals.**

He traced the _Posthumous_ on the citation for the Distinguished Service Cross with a careful fingertip. Bucky died without ever seeing this one, or ever knowing about this. This was one awarded to honor Bucky's memory, because by then the man himself was gone.

Jesus, why the hell was this in a box inside another box in a dusty attic?

> **This was also slightly important. Those medals were mostly awarded for the sake of Bucky’s family, not the man himself – so they’d also served their purpose, in a sense. Bucky’s family, the people that knew and loved him, are all dead and gone, which is why Stiles doesn’t really care that much about giving them over to a museum. They mean about as much to him as any other random war hero’s awards and citations. The only thing that matters to him is whether _Steve_ – Bucky’s only real family still left alive – cares about the medals. (Steve, having been there for most of those events himself, does not. The scraps of ribbon and metal mean little to him in the face of his memories.)**

Well, it wasn't going to stay up there. Stiles packed it all up carefully, and went down to his room. There was online shopping to be done.

He went in with a plan to get the nicest display cases imaginable, which lasted right up until he saw the prices attached to them. He kept seeing cases which somehow cost more than some furniture he had. Stiles opted for something simpler after that.

If he was being honest with himself, Bucky would've hated the ostentatious cases, anyway.

> **I should’ve put a ‘probably’ in there. Stiles doesn’t know Bucky or anything about him, and can only make some educated guesses based on what he’s heard from Steve and what little he remembers from his grandmother’s stories.**

(Stiles tried not to think about the anxiety-fuelled plans he'd already started making during the week of the Mandarin fiasco and everyone was so sure it was gonna be another war. He tried not to wonder what kind of case he would've wanted if a flag and some medals were all his dad were left of him. He tried, but since he ordered exactly that kind of case, he didn't succeed.)

> **I usually imagined it as this case:**

> On the last day of Winter Break, Stiles had the case in hand. It was a thin display box for the medals, with the triangular flag-displaying box mounted on top. The frame split in half so that the medals and flag could be put in without a visible latch on the front.

Stiles laid out the medals, making sure they were as evenly spaced as possible. It was a tight fit. Wasn't that a head-trip, the amount of stupid heroics Bucky had done in the war to earn this many medals.

Jesus, what would happen if he tried to put all of _Steve's_ medals in this thing?

> **They probably wouldn’t fit. Luckily, Steve cares even less about his own medals than he does Bucky’s.**

It was a tight fit, but not too tight. He then placed the flag in the triangle holder on top. Balancing the edges of the glass between his finger-tips so he didn't smudge it, Stiles laid them down in the appropriate notches to hold the glass over the flag and medals. Then he pressed the top half of the frame down, locking it in.

He took it downstairs, and after a bit of mental debating, he put it on top of the bookshelf by the TV. Nice and visible, but not taking the center of attention. That honor still went to the picture on the fireplace mantel, Mom and Dad under the arch of sabers at their wedding. That was apparently the last time Dad had worn his mess dress.

> **I wish I’d also referenced a huppah (Jewish wedding canopy) in this picture. At the time, I was focused on referencing Sheriff Stilinski’s army background – and implying that his military service was coming to a close at the time of his wedding, which is why Stiles doesn’t really remember his dad as a soldier. Oh, well, you live and you learn.**

Heading back upstairs, Stiles unwrapped a package of sheet-protectors. One was for the comic-book, the rest for the medal citations and certificates. Each got a cardstock backing before Stiles put them in a slim binder he bought just for this. If Steve wanted them, Stiles would mail them over - but since that was unlikely, Stiles also started looking up framing stores.

He only stopped researching the plethora of framing options when he overheard his dad getting a late-night call from the station.

After Dad left, Stiles grabbed his keys, his phone, and his jacket, texting Scott. Bucky was long-dead, and the preserving paperwork could wait.

There was half of a dead body somewhere out on the preserve, and Scott and Stiles were going to find it.

> **And so the insanity of Teen Wolf begins. >:)**


	4. 2.1 - Werewolves Are Real

Stiles found Scott trudging down the 115 without a shirt. He slowed down as he pulled just ahead of Scott, rolling to a quiet stop when he finally saw the other boy look up in the rearview mirror.

> **Brief linguistics note: in most of North America, the convention is actually to refer to freeways with _only_ their numbers – so an actual NorCal native would probably say “Stiles found Scott trudging down 115 without a shirt”. Saying _“the_ ##” is a very SoCal-specific regional colloquialism. So the sentence, phrased as is, is actually a mistake on my part. That said, apparently our influence is spreading North, so maybe it's also just foreshadowing.  >:)**

For a moment, both boys froze as the reality of the last week started to hit them.

> **In canon, only about 2-3 days, but I'm stretching out the Teen Wolf timeline a little. Where Seasons 1 and 2 combined were originally only about 10-12 weeks long (January, February, kinda March), I'm stretching it out to about 4-5 months.**

Then Scott clambered into the passenger seat. Stiles started driving without a word.

"I covered for you," Stiles said, as he took one of the exits into town. "My dad's been taking night shifts, so your mom thinks you were at my place last night, that we fell asleep in the middle of a Mario Kart marathon. Well, I stuttered enough that she probably thinks we were playing something we're not supposed to and I was just lying about the Mario Kart. You'll have to call her back, soon."

"I'm a werewolf."

> **Changing species overnight sucks for anyone, let alone someone who didn't want it and to a species they didn't even know _existed_.**

Scott's quiet pronouncement swelled and filled the jeep, stifling them in realization.

"...yup," Stiles said, once they turned onto one of the main roads. What the hell else was he supposed to say?

"I have..." Scott shuddered. "Fangs. And claws, and – I turn into a monster."

> **I put this line in specifically because I think a lot of people forget what a bit part of Season 1 this was – that Scott believed himself to be a monster, and didn't want to be one. That's why Liam's first full moon in Season 4 was such a huge character development moment for him – because that's when he said outloud to someone else who was introduced to the supernatural world just as unwillingly and violently as he'd been that they _aren't_ monsters.**

"At least you have superpowers, too," Stiles pointed out. He hummed in thought. "I wonder if you're as strong as Steve?"

> **But I also wanted to maintain that superhero connection. ;)**

Scott snorted, likely imagining the same thing Stiles was. During Thanksgiving, in a moment of sheer goofiness, they'd both tackled Steve, only for him to lift them up like they weighed nothing. Stiles remembered him and Scott hanging off of Steve's steady arms like cackling koalas. He wondered if Scott could now do the same.

They'd have to find a way to test it out.

> **Stiles already has a personal connection to someone with superpowers, and they live in a context where people's understanding of the world is already breaking down because of the alien invasion, and the god, green monster, and other superheroes that fought it off. Everyone's paradigms are already getting upended, Scott and Stiles' just a little moreso.**

"Should I call him?" Stiles continued. "Maybe-"

"No!" Scott cried out, finally animating enough to face Stiles with raw panic permeating his expression and his body. Stiles would admit he wasn't expecting that.

"He might be able to help," Stiles said. SHIELD had the monopoly on dealing with not-quite-humans, they had to know something about this. Right?

> **Oh, Stiles, you have no idea just how simultaneously right and wrong you are. >:)**

"He _might_ be able to help," Scott conceded. "But whether or not he can, he _will_ tell our parents." Scott shook his head, turning back in his seat. He wrapped his arms around himself, hunching forward as if his entire existence were a bad stomach ache that he could just endure until it went away. He shivered. Stiles – remembering Scott was shirtless – brought up a knee to keep the steering wheel steady while he tugged off his hoodie. Without looking, he passed it over to Scott, who mumbled some incoherent gratitude as he pulled it on. He took a deep breath, and it took Stiles a moment to realize Scott was _sniffing_ it.

"There has to be a cure for this," Scott said. "We just have to find it, and then we can take care of this without either of our parents finding out. We can forget this ever happened."

> **Also a big part of Scott's character: the dark side of his perpetual optimism. For the most part, it's the source of his strength in character – his firm belief that everyone deserves a second chance comes from his belief that people can and will turn themselves around. His belief that if they stick together, he and his pack and his friends and family can defeat all odds comes from this optimism. But sometimes, a little _too_ much optimism can lead to 'head in the sand' syndrome and denial of a hopeless cause.**

Stiles nodded, already formulating a research path in his head. Start with basic Internet searches and their inexplicably well-endowed and thorough school library. Then check out the public and community college libraries, and whatever databases they have access to.

"Sounds like a plan," he said.

And it did.

It sounded like a solid plan even after stumbling into school late, even after discovering the extent of Scott's new senses, and even after finding out the Hunter that attacked Scott last night was his crush's dad.

Through all that, the plan seemed solid.

Right up until Scott tried to kill him in the locker room.

> **It was very difficult to actually summarize that episode in a few lines, yet it seemed so simple and obvious once I actually did so.**

That Stiles had to be the one calming Scott down was weird enough alone. He had no system in place for this, because usually it was the other way around. Stiles had the temper and Scott kept him from doing anything too stupid. Their system worked, and it's been working since kindergarten.

It wasn't working now.

> **The _real_ paradigm shift isn't about a new world, new species, or the new knowledge of the supernatural – it's that the previous structure of their friendship has been turned on its head, and they'll be adapting to that change for a while.**

Stiles' attempt to calm Scott almost seemed to backfire, the way that Scott clambered over the lockers, stalking Stiles like prey. Holy god, Stiles was about to be murdered by his own best friend. They were going to find his body mauled just like all the other 'animal killing' victims and Dad would lose his mind and Scott would be so wracked with guilt once his head cleared he might kill himself and then Melissa would have no one and-

> **I tried to capture panic as best as I could in just one paragraph. Don't know how well I did it.**

Thankfully, something – or maybe not-so-thankfully, some _one_ – got Scott's attention, because at the last moment, he growled and bounded out of the locker room.

Stiles shut his eyes and slid down the corner made by the last row of lockers, trying desperately to get his breath under control and not have another panic attack. He swore his heart was pounding right out of his ribcage and beating a dent into the wall behind him.

Jesus fucking Christ.

No one should have to deal with their best friend trying to kill them. _No one._

> **> :)**


End file.
